How To Piss Away $160 Million

This person needs to be tarred and feathered, then paraded out the lobby of One Police Plaza, followed by the people who hired the idiot. Truly, there needs to be an investigation because this stinks.

The NYPD has to scrap the 36,000 smartphones it gave cops over the past two years because they’re already obsolete and can’t be upgraded, The Post has learned.

The city bought Microsoft-based Nokia smartphones as part of a $160 million NYPD Mobility Initiative that Mayor de Blasio touted as “a huge step into the 21st century.”

But just months after the last phone was handed out, officials plan to begin replacing them all with brand-new iPhones by the end of the year, sources said.

The NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Technology, Jessica Tisch, comes from a very influential family - her billionaire father is James S. Tisch, CEO of the Loews Corporation. But James Tisch is a Republican and was the campaign financial director manager for Mayor de Blasio's mayoral opponent, Joseph Lhota. Tisch was promoted to this position by Commissioner Bratton, who apparently has lost his mind.

Law-enforcement sources blamed the boondoggle on NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology Jessica Tisch, with one saying, “She drove the whole process.”

“Nobody purchases 36,000 phones based on the judgment of one person,” a source said.

“I don’t care if you’re Jesus f- -king Christ; You get a panel of experts.”

Technology experts had long questioned the NYPD’s decision to choose Microsoft-based phones over those that run on Google’s Android software or Apple’s iOS.

Microsoft announced that as of July 11, it was no longer supporting the Windows mobile operating system that powered the NYPD phones.

For the law twenty years of my career I have participated in committees, researched, and made recommendations for the purchase of high tech law enforcement equipment - including computer systems. I was the system administrator for several of them. 

Does the iPhone Bluetooth Blab?

I was talking to my daughter this morning and she brought up a troubling subject. She stated that she was puzzled by something that her iPhone Bluetooth app may be doing. Recently she was talking with her roommates about a subject, overweight males, and a little bit later she starting receiving ads in her favorite apps for swim suits (a product named Chubbies?). She had her iPhone Bluetooth adapter on as she uses it to send music to her Bluetooth speakers.

Same thing happened when she was talking about switching her cell phone provider, she started getting ads about different cell phone service plans. Then one of her roommates got ads about Brooklyn hair salons ... this a few hours after  she was talking about looking for a different salon, in Brooklyn. They both use ATT cellular service on their iPhones.

My daughter used AirDrop to send images, etc., to her work phone or her computer. She kept it on all the time. Once she stopped the Bluetooth adapter until she needed it, the ads stopped. Coinky-dink?

Does any one have any information on this?
Are cellular service companies doing something illegal or is this part of the tiny, tiny script that you don't read in your service agreement?

This is why I refuse to have an Amazon Echo or anything like it in the house. It is just another way for someone to listen in on your life.

Hacker Central

The Moscow Times gives a brief explanation of why there are so many Russian hackers. Does it imply that Russians hacked into poorly defended democratic computers? Not really. It only suggests that Russia certainly has the personnel and the required talent for this to happen.

But Obama and his slave media minions are crying that the illegal access and release of electronic files that document the illegal activities of  his party are a far worse offense than the actual crimes committed by the Democrats.

Lost in the debate about Russian influence in the U.S. presidential election is the fact Russian hackers have been active for a long time. Littering the illicit pages of the dark web, Russian hacking programs today make possible most of the world’s financial-sector break-ins. Increasingly, Russian hackers have acted with political motivations, but their bread and butter is and has always been theft and corporate espionage.

[...]“The U.S.S.R. had the largest engineering community in the world,” says Andrey Soldatov, author of The Red Web and an expert on cyber security and the Russian security services. “They existed to support the Soviet military-industrial complex, and after its collapse, many of these experts and their children, found themselves left high and dry.”

And so, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Russian-speaking hacker community flourished.

“In the early 2000s, lots of people who had access to computers knew how to hack — and they did it, even just to get access to the Internet,” Kruchenok says. “A lot of people worked on the so-called ‘gray Internet’ in the businesses of spam, malware, and porn. Groups would hire talented people to write the code for these industries.”

It's an interesting read.

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True...

...it usually is.

Here is an advertisement for a linux-in-a-flash-drive where you can upgrade your PC, laptop or tablet for around $25.

Xtra-PC is a small thumb drive you simply plug into your computer’s USB port and it instantly transforms your old computer to like new. It works with any computer (Mac or Windows) laptop, desktop, and netbooks made in 2004 or later and it is hands down the fastest, easiest solution to getting yourself a new computer without spending $400, $500, $800 or more – guaranteed.

IMHO you've gotta be really desperate/gullible to go for it. But I am curious.

Has anybody heard any evaluation on this?

God's Memory Banks

From the UK Independent:

Single DNA molecule could store information for a
million years following scientific breakthrough

“A little after the discovery of the double helix architecture of DNA, people figured out that the coding language of nature is very similar to the binary language we use in computers,” Dr Grass said.

“On a hard drive, we use zeros and ones to represent data, and in DNA we have four nucleotides, A, C, T and G,” he said.

The DNA molecules were synthesised by machine and heated to 71C for a week, which is equivalent to being stored at 50C for 2,000 years, after which it was decoded back into the original text without any errors, Dr Grass told the meeting.

[...]DNA has the advantage over hard drives in that it is an extremely dense form of data storage with the potential to survive for long periods of time. An external hard drive for instance is about the size of a paperback book, can store about five terabytes of data and might last 50 years.

In contrast, an ounce (28 grams) of DNA could fit on a penny, store 300,000 terabytes of memory and palaeontologists have shown the information stored in DNA recovered from fossils can survive for up to a million years.

One of the remaining problems, other than the currently exorbitant cost of making DNA for digital storage, is to be able to retrieve the information quickly and easily, which is why Dr Grass is working on a method of labelling specific places on the DNA molecule to make it easier to search.

Crisis In Government: Server Poaching

 It is obvious to all by now that being an email server in the federal government is as dangerous as being a lion in Zimbabwe. The poaching of US government email servers is reaching epidemic proportions.

To combat this alarming trend, a federal judge has issued an order forcing Hillary Clinton and two of her most trusted aides to explain their use of an illegal State Department email server and all pertinent documents in their possession.

Unfortunately Clinton's server has already been killed, meeting the same fate as an IRS server used by Lois Lerner.

[...]The order came in a FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch that was re-opened by Judge Sullivan in June after Clinton’s circumvention of the FOIA laws was revealed when news broke of her use of the private server.

Judicial Watch posted the text of the ruling. (Paragraphs added.)

As agreed by the parties at the July 31, 2015 status hearing, the Government shall produce a copy of the letters sent by the State Department to Mrs. Hillary Clinton, Ms. Huma Abedin and Ms. Cheryl Mills regarding the collection of government records in their possession.

These communications shall be posted on the docket forthwith. The Government has also agreed to share with Plaintiff’s counsel the responses sent by Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills. These communications shall also be posted on the docket forthwith.

In addition, as related to Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests in this case, the Government is HEREBY ORDERED to:

(1) identify any and all servers, accounts, hard drives, or other devices currently in the possession or control of the State Department or otherwise that may contain responsive information;

(2) request that the above named individuals confirm, under penalty of perjury, that they have produced all responsive information that was or is in their possession as a result of their employment at the State Department. If all such information has not yet been produced, the Government shall request the above named individuals produce the information forthwith;

and (3) request that the above named individuals describe, under penalty of perjury, the extent to which Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills used Mrs. Clinton’s email server to conduct official government business.

Story here.

Car Jacking Or Car Hacking?

The more I read about new cars, the more I want wheels that were manufactured pre-1973; full bore Luddite, EMP resistant, hack-proof, analog vehicles.

Like everyone else, Chrysler uses software in its on-board entertainment package. But this one can be accessed over the internet. Two hackers put it to the test...

[...]The result of their work was a hacking technique—what the security industry calls a zero-day exploit—that can target Jeep Cherokees and give the attacker wireless control, via the Internet, to any of thousands of vehicles. Their code is an automaker’s nightmare: software that lets hackers send commands through the Jeep’s entertainment system to its dashboard functions, steering, brakes, and transmission, all from a laptop that may be across the country.

The hackers were only ten miles away when they took control of the vehicle, but distance is not a factor.

Chrysler's UConnect system uses Sprint's cellular network for connectivity, so researchers were able to remotely locate cars by scanning for devices using that particular spectrum band. Chrysler has been including UConnect in cars since late 2013, and any cars that use the system are likely to be vulnerable to the attack. There's no apparent firewall, so once attackers have located the device's IP, they can deploy previously developed exploits to rewrite Uconnect's firmware and control the car as if they had physical access.

Story here and here.

What Happens When The Machines Get A Lot Smarter Than Humans?

From WIRED:

For the first time ever a computer has managed to develop a new scientific theory using only its artificial intelligence, and with no help from human beings.

Computer scientists and biologists from Tufts University programmed the computer so that it was able to develop a theory independently when it was faced with a scientific problem. The problem they chose was one that has been puzzling biologists for 120 years. The genes of sliced-up flatworms are capable of regenerating in order to form new organisms -- this is a long-documented phenomenon, but scientists have been mystified for years over exactly what happens to the cells to make this possible.

By presenting the computer with this problem, however, it was able to reverse engineer a solution that could explain the mechanism of the process, known as planaria. The details discovered by the computer have been published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, along with the artificial intelligence method used to develop the theory.

Actually the title to this article was a bit misleading. Programmers wrote code to have the computer run a series of models designed to reploccate the processes required for planaria. The computer could not do this on its own. But nonetheless, it was a very interesting experiment. Computers are at their best when they are utilized for their speed in running repetitive calculations.

[...]What the computer discovered was that the process requires three known molecules and two proteins that were previously unknown. This discovery, says Levin, "represents the most comprehensive model of planarian regeneration found to date".

"One of the most remarkable aspects of the project was that the model it found was not a hopelessly-tangled network that no human could actually understand, but a reasonably simple model that people can readily comprehend," he adds. All this suggests to me that artificial intelligence can help with every aspect of science, not only data mining but also inference of meaning of the data,"

Will machines get smarter than humans? Hard to say. They are not intuitive and are not capable of inspiration. They get to achieve results by hammering away at the same problem over and over until the desired result is reached. They are only as good as the program that drives them. Can a program duplicate these qualities? I doubt it, not for some time anyway.

Why I Pulled Out Of The Markets

It's just too easy to use a home computer to screw over a few million people.

From the UK Telegraph:

A British man helped to trigger a £500bn US stock market crash by manipulating financial markets on a massive scale from a suburban London semi, US prosecutors have claimed. 

Navinder Singh Sarao, 37, is accused of fraudulently making £27 million by using computer programmes to create fake trades on markets linked to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

US investigators say he was a major contributory factor to the so-called “Flash Crash” of May 6, 2010, when hundreds of billions of dollars was wiped off the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in just five minutes. 

[...]He has been charged with one count of wire fraud, 10 counts of commodities fraud, 10 counts of commodities manipulation, and one count of “spoofing,” a practice of bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution.

The DoJ's investigation was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, which looked at his activities between June 2009 and April 2014, but in particular focused on his trading around the 'flash crash' in May 2010. 

It is alleged that Mr Sarao "engaged in a massive effort to maniplute" the price of the E-mini S&P 500, one of the most popular financial futures markets which is based on the S&P 500 index which includes household names such as Amazon, Boeing and Bank of America.

Shave (Your Arm) And A Haircut?

New application of existing technology turns your arm into a touch screen computer.

[...]Wearers of the of the Cicret bracelet will be able to check an email or watch a film that’s projected onto their forearm, and control the picture by using their skin like a touchscreen.

Wearers of the of the Cicret bracelet will be able to check an email or watch a film that’s projected into their forearm, and control the picture by using their skin like a touchscreen 

The makers of the device, who are currently raising money to put it into production on their website, say it can do anything a phone or tablet can, allowing wearers to read emails, surf the web, watch videos, play games and even make phone calls without relying on a conventional screen.

A tiny projector in the bracelet will cast an image onto the skin then eight long-range proximity sensors will detect every swipe, tap and pinch.

The bracelet will also contain a USB port and accelerometer as well as supporting Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.  

While it will be made so it can sync with an iPhone, it's designed to be a stand-alone device.

Story here:

Cyber Warfare

The following link shows a graphic representation of cyber attacks throughout the world. It describes the attacker's origin, type of attack and target. Click on or hover over any country in the Origin or Target boxes to see the current rate of attacks.

In about ten minutes of tracking, the USA received over 5,300 cyber-strikes, over 2,300 of them originating from China.

http://map.ipviking.com/

The USA is consistently the most common target of these attacks.
China is consistently the most common country of origin for these attacks.
And WTH has Iceland to do with anything??

Common types of attacks:
SSH

Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for secure data communication, remote command-line login, remote command execution, and other secure network services between two networked computers. Brute force attacks are common.

Telnet

The attacker exploits a weakness in the Cisco router operating system and uses brute force to obtain a password to enter the router.

MS-SQL-S

The attacker attempts to enter an Micro Soft SQL Server system by exploiting a weakness: in many instances the MS SQL server will be installed in a mixed mode configuration. The default user for this is “sa.” Very often a simple password is used for this user making it relatively easy to brute-force the password.

SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol is a popular protocol for network management. It is used for collecting information from, and configuring, network devices, such as servers, printers, hubs, switches, and routers on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks can cripple SNMP IP networks by increasing network traffic by hundreds of gigabytes per second.

SMTP

Hackers will test the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol for thousands of addresses by using telnet to the server on port 25 and run the VRFY command. The VRFY command makes a server check whether a specific user ID exists. Spammers often automate this method to perform a directory harvest attack, which is a way of gleaning valid e-mail addresses from a server or domain for hackers to use.

Brute Force

A brute force attack is a trial-and-error method used to obtain information such as a user password or personal identification number (PIN). In a brute force attack, automated software is used to generate a large number of consecutive guesses as to the value of the desired data. Brute force attacks may be used by criminals to crack encrypted data, or by security analysts to test an organization's network security.

H/t Weasel Zippers. Apparently there was a huge attack yesterday originating from China.

Nekkid Pictures

Scores of celebrities are outraged that their nudie pix have been hacked.

Nude photos of Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, as well as those purportedly showing other top Hollywood stars, were posted online in an apparent massive hacking leak.

An anonymous hacker reportedly gained access to private photos on the Hunger Games actress’s mobile phone, and those of 100 others, via Apple's online storage system iCloud.

Story here.

For allegedly technologically informed people, they are incredibly naive. If it's out there, someone is going to hack it.

I have some personal photos on my cloud drive through my Kindle. Everyone of them is rated "G".

Go ahead - have at 'em.

I have managed to stay alive for over 60 years without a single photograph of me in my birthday suit.

I have been married for over 30 years and if I want to see my wife naked, I ask her. Then she tells me to "Go pound sand ya pervert.".  No pictures are needed.

These self absorbed ego maniacs need to shift their focus away from themselves.

Move Over Silicon

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov are two scientists who isolated one-atom-thick sheets of a revolutionary new substance, thereby winning the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics. They invented graphene, one of the strongest, lightest and most conductive materials known to humankind.

Many think it's going to forever change the world of electronics.

Graphene is a form of carbon derived from graphite oxide. It possessess

"phenomenal electron mobility – roughly 100 times greater than silicon. This means that graphene could replace silicon as a semiconductor material...  

This means that future devices would be able to become lighter, longer lasting, and more efficient." 

Compared to silicon-based microchips, graphene is dirt cheap. You can grow this stuff using existing DVD technology.

How'd you like a incredibly light weight super conducting battery that lasts for hours and hours, can take a charge over a million times and recharges 100,000x faster than Mr. Coppertop? Or a CPU that clocks at over 400 GHz? Oh yeah!

Charge your iPhone for 30 seconds and you're done. Plug in your Tesla electric car for ten minutes and then drive 200 miles.

The graphene battery finally dies? Throw it in the garbage or in your garden, it's carbon-based and completely bio-degradable.

Unfortunately there is a problem You can't turn this chip off.

The problem with graphene is that it has no band gap; electrons can flow at any energy. So the major focus of graphene engineers has been to find ways of creating an artificial band gap using methods such as applying electric fields, doping with atoms or by stretching and squeezing the material.

These approaches have met with modest success. Practical digital circuits require a band gap on the order of 1 eV at room temperature. But the best efforts with graphene have produced modest band gaps in the few hundred meV.

Even then this has come at a serious cost. The best graphene transistors are hugely fast but they dissipate energy like there’s no tomorrow and leak current like water through a sieve.

Engineers are working on this of course. All other kinds of other crazy stuff is being developed from this technology. Holographic disks are now possible and, get this, have already been developed. They have mind-boggling storage capacity.

There's a short video clip here and read more on this amazing new material here and here.